This is undoubtedly one of the most “alien” trees in the botanical collection: the Saint Lawrence River. It only really begins at half its own height, its fruits, or growths—I'm not sure—are the largest in the hydrovegetal realm, and its foliage is clean and orderly on one side but riddled with lakes on the other. Its trunk plunges cleanly and widely into the ground, without it being clear where the tree ends and where the ocean begins. The river is established in North American geography as a gateway—an easy tree to climb, to stick with the metaphor—which the French of the 16th and 17th centuries traveled up and colonized, as demonstrated by the fascinating toponymy of the tree. Later in history, this tree became a fabulous river highway where goods circulated from branch to branch, helping to propel the young United States to the rank of a major world power.

Like the Meuse, the Saint Lawrence Tree is a fossil river: not that it is very old—it is surprisingly young at 8,500 years old. What makes it a fossil is what can be seen in its silhouette. The Great Lakes, whose name barely conveys their titanic dimensions, date back to the last ice age, 20,000 years ago, when the Laurentian ice sheet, several kilometers thick and now gone, retreated as the climate warmed, leaving behind prodigious amounts of water when it melted. These gargantuan lakes date back to that time, but that's not all: the entire St. Lawrence River system, including the layout of its branches (its trunk is older), also dates back to that time. Ice sheets have a habit of completely reshaping the ground as they advance and retreat.

Even today, we can see the ghost of this ice cap in the plethora of lakes left on what is known as the Canadian Shield (the right side of the tree), composed of very old, hard soil exposed on the surface by the abrasive action of the glacier. This poor, hard soil does not allow water to seep through, so there are hundreds of thousands of lakes on its surface.

The St. Lawrence tree is astonishing with its five large lakes that communicate with each other but in only one direction: that of the water. First, the farthest, wildest, and largest, Lake Superior, which flows into Lake Huron via the Sainte-Marie River. The latter also receives water from Lake Michigan, known for the city of Chicago, which is rooted on its surface. Lake Huron flows into Lake Erie via the Rivière Sainte-Claire and finally into Lake Ontario with noise and panache via the Niagara Falls. It is only at this point that the St. Lawrence River truly begins its journey, along a billion-year-old channel, crossing Quebec with Montreal, Trois-Rivières, and Quebec City, where the river officially meets the sea at the height of its power, carrying enough water to the sea to claim second place in North America in terms of river flow.

There is a tree that seems to me to perfectly embody this river: the sugar maple, Acer saccharum, symbol of Canada and emblem of the Laurentian forest. It is found throughout the region, turning spectacularly red in the fall and then producing the famous maple syrup in winter, a sweet nectar of sap and visual proof of the life that silently animates these trees, mirroring this great river and its water, flowing slowly from great lake to great lake.

The St. Lawrence maple, Acer Laurentius